In a site of offshore development or the like, creation of sentences of a foreign language is often required. When a writer with only a limited knowledge of a foreign language grammar creates a foreign language sentence, there are roughly two situations. As the first situation, the writer creates a sentence of his/her native language, and then creates a desired foreign language sentence based on it. As the second situation, the writer creates a foreign language sentence that is grammatically imperfect, and then creates a desired foreign language sentence based on it. In both situations, to reduce a load on the writer and efficiently create the foreign language sentence, a method of supporting foreign language sentence creation is necessary.
As foreign language sentence creation support methods of this type, methods using, for example, machine translation, a wordbook, a parallel translation exemplary sentence database, and similarity are known.
In the method using machine translation, a foreign language sentence can be generated by translating a native language sentence input in the native language of the writer into a foreign language by machine translation.
In the method using a wordbook, if a foreign language word is unknown, a wordbook of the native language is searched, and an equivalent word is output, thereby obtaining the foreign language word.
In the method using a parallel translation exemplary sentence database, when a word of the native language is input, a parallel translation exemplary sentence database using a parallel translation dictionary and a similar word dictionary is searched, thereby outputting a corresponding equivalent word and an exemplary sentence including the equivalent word.
In the method using similarity, the words of an input sentence and those of an exemplary sentence to be searched for are compared, thereby outputting an exemplary sentence of high similarity.
However, all of these conventional foreign language sentence creation support methods put a heavy load on the writer.
For example, in the method using machine translation, since the machine translation result is not always a text intended by the writer, many correction operations are needed until the desired foreign language sentence is created.
In the method using a wordbook, it may be impossible to create a foreign language sentence from the obtained foreign language word, or the load of creating a foreign language sentence is heavy.
In the method using a parallel translation exemplary sentence database, exemplary sentences using unintended grammatical expressions are also searched for, and a load is needed to narrow down them into exemplary sentences using an intended grammatical expression. Additionally, the method using a parallel translation exemplary sentence database cannot be applied when inputting a foreign language sentence that is grammatically imperfect and creating a perfect foreign language sentence.
In the method using similarity, since exemplary sentences are searched by the similarity between words, unintended exemplary sentences may be included, and a load is incurred in narrowing them down into intended exemplary sentences.
That is, in the conventional foreign language sentence creation support methods, the load on the writer when creating an intended foreign language sentence is heavy.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a foreign language sentence creation support apparatus, method, and program capable of reducing the load when creating a foreign language sentence.